


Weird

by Capella (Caprina)



Category: Doctor Who, due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 11:07:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caprina/pseuds/Capella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's all in a day's work, if you're a Chicago cop with experimental hair and partnered with the Mountie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weird

**Author's Note:**

> My first DS story, from 2006. Written for the DS Flashfiction Weaponry challenge.

Ray slammed the door shut, then leaned heavily against it, breathing hard. It was solid dark wood, with an antique lock just below centre and eight inch bolts top and bottom. Though it looked good, there was no way of telling if it was strong enough to hold back the creature – 

The creature. God.

"What the hell was that thing?" he spluttered, spinning round to confront the others and pressing his shoulders back against the door.

"Well," Fraser began, but the English guy butted right in.

"Our friends downstairs call it a Buruth demon."

Our friends. Huh. All thirteen of the robed-up whackjobs had made it out through the basement while the thing had followed them up here. At some point between the lobby and the library the English pair had shown up out of nowhere, which was quite weird enough without any crazy talk about demons. 

"They friends of yours?" Ray said accusingly.

"Oh, come on. Do we look like members of the Brotherhood?" The guy had piercing dark eyes, intense, in a bony face. He seemed wired. Maybe because he’d just been chased up several flights of stairs by a three-headed nightmare that refused to lie down and die.

"So if they call it a Buruth demon, I imagine you have another name for it?" Fraser prompted.

"I'm not absolutely certain. Its metabolism seems to be sulphur based -"

"Undoubtedly," Fraser agreed warmly.

"And it’s exuding nitrous oxide through the skin.”

Fraser nodded. "With a trace of bromine, if I’m not mistaken.”

"Right, so it’s obviously from the Xeryan system, although they've apparently done a bit of evolving since the last time I was there."

“The Jerry-Anne system?” Ray’s head was hurting.

“No, Xeryan, with an ‘X’. Half a dozen pleasant little planets, not dissimilar to yours, and all teeming with unique, one hundred percent murderous, life forms.”

“How do you reckon it got here?” the girl said, calm, like this was a perfectly normal conversation.

“Fluctuating spatio-temporal rift, I expect. They’re more common than you’d think. This can’t be the first time, can it, if the Brotherhood had already got its name and number?”

Cancel head hurting and make that exploding, Ray thought. "Wait a minute,” he said. “You're saying that the demon thing isn't actually a demon, not that I was exactly happy with that concept, but it's really-"

"An alien," the girl told him. "Like most things that people think are supernatural, in fact." She smiled sympathetically. "Mad, isn't it? I took a while to get used to it."

"Actually, it makes a good deal of sense." Trust Fraser to pipe up all cheerful at a moment like this. "A number of eminent scholars have advanced the same theory. Maximilian Cadwallader's treatise on the subject is particularly fascinating."

"You've read Cadwallader?" English guy sounded like he'd just bumped into his long-lost twin. 

Fraser rubbed his ear. "Only the early works. I'm afraid his later writings are a little too, ah, abstruse for me."

"Yes, poor old Max did lose the plot somewhat towards the end. Great shame, really. You'd never guess it from his books, but he was a very funny chap. Fantastic after dinner speaker. I remember once..."

And just like that, the guy was off and running with some weird anecdote, exactly like Fraser with his Inuit stories except about twice as fast. And Fraser was standing there gazing, with that look on his face that you normally saw on the other guy, the one getting the Benton Fraser treatment for the first time. 

In any other circumstances it would have been priceless.

Ray sighed, and jammed his ear up against the door. No sound out there yet, at least. He turned back to the girl. "Who are you, then?"

She smiled again, and stuck out a hand. She was hot in a vaguely slutty way; all overdone eyeliner and bad bleach job, but nice curves under the tight faded jeans and T shirt, and eyes full of laughter. 

"Rose Tyler, pleased to meet you,” she said, “and that's the Doctor.”

“The Doctor? Doctor what?”

“Good question,” Rose admitted, glancing across at the man in question with a strange, soft expression. “Just ‘Doctor’ is fine. He’s a, um, specialist in this sort of thing."

"No kidding." 

Doctor Whatever was still feeding Fraser the line, and the Mountie was lapping it all up, big-eyed, with his mouth actually hanging open. 

After a moment, Ray realised Rose was waiting. "Uh, Detective Ray Vecchio, Chicago PD," he managed.

"And your friend?" 

"That's Fraser, my partner.”

“Your... partner?” Her eyes went wide as she looked at Fraser and back to Ray.

“Yeah, you know, cops?” Ray said, a bit too quickly. “Fraser's a Mountie." 

"You're joking! Really? They actually make them wear those ridiculous clothes, and not just in crappy films?"

"Yeah, really." He stopped himself from pointing out that her guy wasn't exactly the last word in style, what with the dorky white sneakers under the brown suit. There were more important things to talk about.

"Guys,” he said loudly, “I hate to break up the party, but there's some kind of slobbering alien monster regrouping out there, and we could really use a plan right about now." 

Fraser cleared his throat, and shot Ray a quick glance. "Right you are, Ray." Eyes back to the Doctor. "Are you quite sure it's not dead?"

"Positive. If there's one evolutionary trick every last life form on Xeryan B seems to have perfected, it's refabrication. It'll be breaking down the door in less than half an hour, I should think." The Doctor didn't sound particularly worried.

“Could we perhaps sneak past it while it’s busy, er, refabricating?” Fraser suggested.

The Doctor shook his head. “It’s not a risk I’d be willing to take. It’ll lash out to protect itself instinctively, even if it is half way through the process.”

"Well, we won't be escaping this way," Rose said, over by the fire door. "Nailed shut, and three padlocks on the bars outside. The windows are all much the same."

"That's a shocking breach of fire regulations," Fraser said, wandering across to see for himself. He sounded genuinely upset. And now Rose was giving Fraser the are-you-for-real look, which made Ray feel slightly better.

The Doctor was in the middle of the room, hands in pockets, staring round at it all: the whole gothic decor thing, the big fake fireplace, the high wall shelves, the total lack of heavy weaponry. He nodded at Rose. "We couldn't have gone out that way, in any case," he said. "It would only have followed us, and we could hardly have it rampaging through downtown Chicago, slaughtering everyone in its path.”

“So we call it in,” Ray said, reaching for his cellphone.

The Doctor whipped his head round to glare at Ray. “And say what? They’re not going to believe you, and if they approach it unprepared, there’ll be carnage. The creature’s here and it’s got our scent. We just have to stay and fight it."

“Kill it?” Rose said sharply.

“Rose, we’re not talking about a Slitheen. There’s no redeeming intelligence there, just the instinct to kill or maim any other living thing it sees. Xeryan B’s evolutionary bias is extreme; it only breeds the most vicious of monsters, and we can’t afford to let one loose here. As I say, we have to stop it.”

"Yeah, right." Ray fished out his boot gun and spun it round his finger. "And unless either of you are packing, we're going to stop it with what, exactly? A couple of repro fire irons and my backup gun? I hardly made a dent in it the first time, and now we're down to this. We're screwed." 

Fraser laughed unexpectedly. "On the contrary, Ray. Look around you. Books! The most powerful weapons in the world! We're in an armoury here."

The Doctor was grinning all over his face as he clapped Fraser on the shoulder. "Well, you're obviously the brains of this outfit," he said, and Ray experienced a sudden and vivid urge to kick him in the head. 

"I'll start with demonology," the Doctor said.

"And I'll take exorcisms," Fraser replied enthusiastically. 

Ray groaned and waggled his eyebrows at Rose, but she was right there with the program, pulling a huge dusty book over and perching on the edge of the desk. 

Ray prowled the room for a while, but when Fraser told him, “Arm yourself!” and handed him an ancient, mouldy-looking encyclopaedia of the occult, he muttered, "Yeah, right, what should I look for?"

"Anything about the Buruth demon," the Doctor said cheerfully. "It has to have its weaknesses. That's the way universal law works."

"Kryptonite," Ray said, and started flicking through the pages. 

He'd not even found the entry for the Buruth demon when Fraser said, "Ah," in that quietly excited way of his, right at the moment when the Doctor's high-speed murmuring ended in a shout of "Yes!"

"It's the eyes," the Doctor said. "We just have to destroy the eyes to knock out the distributed neural circuitry completely. If we can subdue it for long enough, that is."

Fraser hmmed a little. "Well, that should be possible. The language in this one is a trifle flowery, but I believe the gist of it is, the creature is highly susceptible to vapours of certain medium density waxes, such as... no, that won't do... perhaps... of course! Lanolin!" He let the book fall to the table and glanced round at the rest of them. "I don't suppose any of you, no, not in this weather. Ah well, it can't be avoided." He'd already unfastened his collar as he spoke, and was stripping his tunic off in record time. 

"Frase, what are you doing?" Ray demanded. "You got to get naked to fight this thing?" 

"Not naked, Ray. We only need the wool."

"He's right," the Doctor said, jabbing a finger at Fraser's book. "Fumes from the lanolin in the wool should quieten the creature down, and give you the chance to shoot its eyes out. All of them. Have you got enough ammunition?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure," Ray said, only half listening while he watched Fraser pull off his boots and arrange them neatly under the desk.

The Mountie pushed his suspenders off his shoulders, saying, "My apologies, Rose. It's just that with repeated exposure to the elements, cleaning and the like, one can't be entirely sure of the lanolin content." He started undoing his pants.

"Be my guest," Rose said, laughing. She gave Ray a knowing look and hissed from the side of her mouth, "Unexpected bonus."

"Hey!" he shot back.

"Oh come on, I'm only looking." She punched his arm lightly.

Of course she was looking. She'd have had to be blind, otherwise. Fraser's white cotton boxers and henley might have started the day nicely starched and crisp, but even the Super-Mountie had to build up a sweat under all that serge in May. His shirt was damp in the back, and sticking to his skin between the shoulder blades. The pushed-up sleeves looked somehow sinful, and the shorts - well, perhaps it'd be better for everyone if Ray kept his eyes off the shorts.

While Ray stood gawping, the Doctor and Rose had emptied one of the big urns from beside the fireplace, and done something with bits of paper and a high-tech pen thing of the Doctor's. They had quite a fire going. Rose took the clothes from Fraser, and handed him a coal shovel in return.

"Jeez, Fraser, you're actually going to let them burn the uniform? Isn’t that, like, sacrilege?"

"Not so much burn, as roast it," Fraser said firmly. "Really, Ray, there's no other choice." 

He was right, if the growling was anything to go by. Totally pissed off growling, of the who shot me in the head when I wasn't paying attention? variety, and coming from right outside the door.

The wool certainly smelled bad.

The smoke got thicker, the growling outside got louder, and Fraser coughed behind his hand, then hefted the shovel. "Well, Ray,” he said, “I think it might be time for you to, ah, stack that bad boy."

"That's rack, Fraser." Like he didn't know.

Fraser knocked his palm against his forehead. "Rack, of course. Rack that bad boy." The corner of his lip twitched, very slightly.

Ray could feel the grin stretching his own face. He had to be hyped on adrenaline, because on the other side of that door - the door they were about to open - there was a three-headed alien hellhound, angry as fuck and probably just as hungry. No way should he be having fun.

“Don’t forget, all the eyes,” the Doctor said. He was waving the poker about and grinning, too, but then he was obviously a bigger freak than any of them. "Ready?" he asked. He nodded to Rose, who reached for the top bolt.

"Ready," Ray said, with just a touch of Steve McQueen. He pushed his glasses up his nose and flicked off the safety. "Let's take this mother down."

 

********************

 

When it was over, the Doctor and Rose volunteered to get rid of the carcass. For once, Fraser had reluctantly agreed that the world didn't have to know the whole truth. They'd had the call to say that the Brotherhood had been picked up, all of them, speeding on the freeway in their little Honda bus. The DA would have plenty to work on with the larceny, fraud and extortion, without having to throw charges of summoning hell-spawn into the mix. And that was a good thing, too. Juries tended to get twitchy over stuff like that. 

Almost as twitchy as Fraser, who'd apparently come down off his own adrenaline gig and remembered that he was parading around in his underwear. Ray draped an arm across Fraser’s shoulder, and got a good lungful of sweaty Mountie for his efforts. It certainly beat lanolin fumes.

"Come on, Frase, let's go and get you some uncooked clothes." Ray rattled the car keys, trying to ignore Rose mouthing "Shame!" over the Doctor's shoulder. "We can figure out what to put in the report while we're driving."

But once they were in the Goat they didn't speak for a while. Ray drummed rapidly on the wheel, thinking it all through.

They'd agreed to meet Rose and the Doctor later, at Dino's. The Doctor had insisted - "We can't possibly visit nineteen nineties Chicago and not eat some decent Italian food," - and something about that sentence made Ray think Fraser’d had a point when he'd whispered, "Ray, Maximilian Cadwallader has been dead since 1937!" 

So it was strange, and the Doctor was right past strange and out the other side, but Rose was fun, and the Mountie was kind of cute when he got that open-mouthed amazed stare all over his face.

Ray would be willing to work pretty hard to earn that stare for himself.

Pulling up at a red light, Ray looked across to the passenger seat, careful not to focus on his partner’s legs for too long. Fraser was staring at him right now, but it was more warm than astonished.

"That was good work, Ray," Fraser said softly.

"You too, Frase. Guess we saved the day, or the town, or something."

Fraser smiled, and Ray smiled back, and just like that he made the decision.

They'd eat dinner with the others, and afterwards there’d be no going back to the consulate. He’d invite Fraser up to his apartment and they'd kick back on the couch, with a beer maybe, and have a long overdue talk. About buddies, and partners, and just what Fraser ought to be doing with that big, hot body of his. Because Fraser and him, they were on the same page now. He could feel it.

And sure, there was the two guys thing, and the two cops thing, and none of it was exactly normal, but what the hell. After the kind of day they'd had, what was a little weirdness between friends?


End file.
